Israeli Scholar Says Outcry Over His Rape Remarks Has Not Hurt Planned U.S. Tour

Mordechai Kedar says he was not advocating sexual assault but was describing “the culture in which we live.”

By Peter Schmidt

An Israeli scholar who has come under fire for discussing rape
as a hypothetical deterrent to Hamas terrorism says the controversy
over his remarks has done little to dampen interest in his planned
speaking tour next year at college campuses and other sites in the
United States.

Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in Arabic literature at
Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, said in an interview on Israeli radio
last month that terrorists can be deterred only by the threat of
their